


Fly Right into the Future

by fandomfrolics



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, MIT Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-14 20:44:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2202441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomfrolics/pseuds/fandomfrolics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time James Rhodes sits in an airplane is the first time he knows what he wants to do for the rest of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fly Right into the Future

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Seal's 'Fly like an Eagle' (which is a cover I think but that's my fav version and I think would be Rhodey's too)

The first time James Rhodes sits in an airplane is the first time he knows what he wants to do for the rest of his life. It’s in the way the friction just seems to disappear as the wheels first leave the earth, the way the ground disappears beneath him and the trees just shrink away, the way the plane tilts upwards, forcing him back against the cushions and teasing an ascent towards the stars.

It’s an obsession. He spends his days watching the monstrous machines soar past overhead, the perspective belying their true size and power. His nights he’s out on the rooftop, his dad’s telescope propped up next to him while he tries to find Venus in the polluted Philadelphia skies.

He finds he’s good at math, he’s  _great_ at calculus, and he can’t speak for how overjoyed he is because they tell him that this is important. This is what he needs if he wants to someday touch the sky.

He finds great isn’t enough. Good  _sure_  as hell isn’t. Not when he’s surrounded by child prodigies and certified geniuses and it’s enough to make him want to _scream_  because he feels how close he is. He’s checking all the boxes - Air Force ROTC, major in MIT Aeronautical Engineering, evenings in an avionics research lab - but he’s drowning. He’s falling beneath the ocean when all he wants is to be among the stars.

He’s never been one to walk away from a challenge though so he grits his teeth and white-knuckles through. Sophomore year is the worst, they’ve said. Make it through Unified and you’re golden. So he does. He sleeps in hour-long spurts, gets in his required physical training with his book under his eyes, asks for help. Asks and asks and asks because if there’s anything learned in his time so far is that he can’t do it alone. And no one’s telling him to. So he needles the seniors in his dorm, spends his days at office hours and nights with equally exhausted-looking classmates. And he makes it through.

His reward for surviving Unified is a ride in a small prop plane with a couple of his classmates. The pilot does a few tricks, puts them into a stall and soars through a few zero-gravity parabolas and he understands it all now, can see the equations dancing around in front of his eyes as the plane rises and falls and takes his heart along with it.

The rest of his degree isn’t smooth sailing, not by a long shot, but now he’s _doing_  it. He takes apart a Boeing engine. He builds a lighter-than-air vehicle out of balsa wood and weather balloons. He runs thermal tests on the satellite built completely by a group of his peers, the one that’s landed a NASA launch date.

He grins and he frowns by equal turns, punches the air one day and the wall the next because it’s so goddamn difficult and exhausting and  _frustrating_ but it’s magic, it really is and he can’t believe he gets to spend the rest of his life doing it.


End file.
